Gill Denies Disagreement With Prasar Bharti Board

S S Gill, the executive-member of the newly formed Prasar Bharati board, yesterday said there is no difference of opinion between him and other members of the board, including its chairman and veteran journalist Nikhil Chakravartty.

Ive the best relations with Nikhilda, both personal and professional, as well as other members of the board. We have unanimity of views as well as of approach for revamping the vital official electronic media of Doordarshan and All India

Radio to wake them up from long professional sleep and lethargy, Gill said this while reacting to media reports that differences had cropped up between him and Chakravartty and other members of the board on the issue of his style of functioning.

 

Responding to media criticism on another issue, Gill said he had not banned the telecast of religious serials on DD, but has ordered a review of all privately produced programmes including the religious serials.

Gill said it was wrong to say that he was against the religious serials, because I as information and broadcasting secretary a few years ago was responsible for starting the first religion-based serial Ramayana, on DD.

But, at present as many as seven religious serials and 27 film-based programmes are being telecast on DD, and it is too much, Gill added.

Reacting to press criticism that he was going too fast in his new assignment, he said he had full support of the board to re-furbish the image of official electronic media.

But, everybody has his own strategy for this work and I have prepared my own strategy, and you may call it the Gill strategy. If some people do not like it, I cannot help it, he said.

Gill said his strategy was to give a shock therapy to the 45,000-strong but by-and-large ailing bureaucracy of DD and AIR.

And I have already succeeded in it. The number of late-coming staff in Doordarshan here has come to less than two-digits within a week, he added. The main thrust areas of his strategy, Gill said, were to make the functioning of DD and AIR transparent, upgrade the contents to international standards and prepare the official electronic media to play an activist role in society.

Gill said he had advised the DD staff to compare every day the news bulletins prepared by various private national and international news organisations so as to know the shortcomings of DD.

He also said he had ordered a review of the existing news-based programmes to ensure that they were not only entertaining but projected the Indian social values, instead of highlighting crass consumerism based on western culture.

Gill said for playing an activist role in society, DD should give top priority to mass-education.

It should also help create awareness against social evils such as child marriage, bonded labour, dowry.

The official media, he said should help propagate the benefits of sanitation, clear drinking water and child health. For this purpose, help of private parties would be taken, if needed.

Gill said he was in favour of preparing in-house programmes so as to utilise the large but untapped professional qualities of the DD staff.

He said studies had shown that private producers corner as much as 48 per cent of DDs revenue by preparing mostly cut-and-paste programmes.

He said many good private programme producers, who had gone away from DD during recent years, had shown their willingness to again work for DD and prepare socially-relevant programmes.

Referring to the labour relations, Gill said he had already taken some steps to improve management-staff relationship.